or a cynical marketing ploy to get more people buying stuff on Record Store Day?
(and then lobbing it on EBay at vastly inflated prices)
Response to Market Forces …
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Musings on the byways of popular culture
Can`t see anything wrong with a vinyl chart, no harm there.
Now Record Store Day, that`s a different matter. Carpet Baggers out to make a quick buck out of the gullible. I buy about 30% of my albums in the vinyl format but steer well clear of RSD shenanigans.
I have mixed feelings about RSD too, and had heard that some small independent shops find it a bit of a mixed blessing, but I thought that this email from Manchester’s Piccadilly Records today was interesting…
“The wait is finally over as the countdown to Record Store Day enters its final week. It’s hard to believe that this will be the event’s eighth year in the UK, and maybe after this long it would be easy to get blasé about the whole thing. However I don’t think we can overstate what a boost RSD has been for independent records shops. Back in 2008 with the financial crisis biting, and iPods all the rage, things were a bit gloomy here. Was there a future for physical formats or bricks and mortar shops like ours? Then along came Record Store Day, and from that moment onwards things have looked up.
It’s not that Record Store Day has turned us from being a rubbish shop to a brilliant one – we were a fantastic shop (and website) before the event came along (we’d previously won as Best Record Shop in the Music Week and Gilles Peterson Worldwide Awards). It’s that the publicity generated around the day, and especially the focus on vinyl, has kick started a renaissance in record buying, bringing us a whole new set of regular customers, meaning we can spread the word about brilliant music to so many more people. Being able to pass on our enthusiasm for the likes of Jane Weaver or Horsebeach, Goat or William Onyeabor to a wider audience is what we’re all about, and Record Store Day has helped us do that. “
Not sure how this is the first vinyl chart! Sound like a junior journalist with no research skills or an older one with a poor memory!
This has allowed the BBC to do what they do every six weeks – start a story with the astonishing revelation that “people are buying vinyl….again!”
Bloody civilians….
I can more handle that sort of thing from an independently funded newspaper but I’m not sure that this really represents value for money for most of us that fund the BBC. Quite apart from the subject matter, a huge number of the readers of this article will know that it’s factually inaccurate. When the lazy journalists can’t even get things right when they could almost certainly have shouted across the office to get their facts checked then why should we even begin to believe the “facts” in more complicated “news” stories. This isn’t an isolated incident.
IIRC, the last Vinyl album I bought was Born in the USA in 1985. I got rid of my record player 1996 ish, & I finally sold all my vinyl singles & albums about 12 years ago.
I think CDs sound better than vinyl & are easier to use. I have no intention of ever buying or listening to vinyl again.
That’s fair enough Jack. The last vinyl album I bought arrived yesterday via U.P.S. it is Wolflight by Steve Hackett and it contains a CD of the album which will be ripped onto my iPod so I can listen to the music in my car and/or while I’m walking the dogs, I’ll never listen to the CD. I’ll listen to the record a lot because I think vinyl sounds better than any other format and I have no intention of stopping buying or listening to it.
It’s horses for courses isn’t it?
Can’t help but agreeing with Jackthebiscuit on this one.
The time to buy vinyl was in the 1980s, when the world and his wife were lumping onto CDs!
I bought my first CD player in 1997.
The going rate for a new ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ on vinyl appears to be about £20.
Down Berwick Street now £20 would get you half of The Beatles’ back catalogue on CD or, in Fopp, four Kinks’ deluxe editions of their 60s LPs.
I’m using this current infatuation with vinyl to fill every gap in the ol’ CD collection while I can.
The time to buy vinyl was NOT in the 80s, in the UK at least – it was crap. Most mass market vinyl albums were barely better than flexi-discs. This is one of the reasons why the first Blue Nile album stood out as something special.
Re: the first Blue Nile album
Yes, Linn certainly did a nice job with that.
That was the whole point for them as I recall – it was some kind of demonstration disc for their turntables.
What the chart will presumably reveal is that the top sellers are either 40 plus years old or from a relatively narrow range of indie/rock. Which in itself casts doubt on the notion that vinyl will once again become anything more than a niche format. I suspect that there will be a limited number of people willing to pay a premium for LPs of contemporary albums that were recorded digitally and don’t sound significantly different to CDs or lossless downloads. Particularly if Neil Young has a hand in the pricing – up to £79 for the latest album ! No thanks.
I buy vinyl, always have and always will. It’s too expensive, but it’s my only vice, which is how I justify it! There’s also a rather nice 20yr old Quad CD player lurking in the rack, which sees plenty of action too. CD buyers……turn your backs on those FOPP prices…..estocks on eBay is your friend.